Category: kitbash

A Star Guard “smuggler interceptor” using the military version of the Corellian Engineering YT 1300 light freighter which I call the GT-1350 chasing a smuggler in an original YT-1300. (is it the Millennium Falcon or another smuggler using the YT-1300? Who knows.) Have you ever noticed that the Millennium Falcon always out flies and out maneuvers a Tie-fighter?

PREMIS

About thirty odd years ago I co-wrote two books, King of the Mob and Undercover, about Prohibition in Canada and how Canada smuggled illicit alcohol into the United States from 1919 to 1933.

One of the things I found out during my research was that in the early days of Prohibition the United States Coast Guard was ill prepared to intercept many of the faster boats that opportunists and later gangsters used to smuggle alcohol either from Canada or the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (off the coast of Newfoundland). But if the US Coast Guard was able to seize one of the smugglers and the specifications were acceptable the seized vessel was turned into a Coast Guard smuggler catcher. The Coast Guard also purchased fast boats that were the same as or similar to those that were used by the smugglers. The Royal Navy used a similar policy in converting fast sloops to pirate catchers during the pirates of the Caribbean era.

So one day I had the idea of turning my Star Wars Command Millennium Falcon into a “smuggler catcher.”

The Star Guard GT-1350 at a landing pad on a planetary base (Robin Rowland)

Since the Star Wars Command Millennium Falcon is marketed as a child’s toy, it runs on wheels and there are three gaps on the underbelly. Also while detailed, the Star Wars Command Falcon is crude compared to the higher quality models on the market.

So it sat on the shelf for a couple of years until I had the idea of making it a “coast guard” interceptor.

Scenario

Time: The late “Old”Republic at the time Lando Calrissian and Han Solo were flying the Millennium Falcon. The time was becoming more lawless after the Sith Wars. Smugglers were found working all sections of the galaxy.

Remember in all the now forty years of Star Wars, according to both Star Wars canon and Star Wars Legends, the Corellian Y-1300 light freighter was a standard production model, so there must have been lots of them around, even though Star Wars, so far, has had only one Millennium Falcon (and I am pretty sure the fans would want only one Falcon)

Place: An alliance of several star systems under the banner of the Republic. Since all these systems are quasi-independent, while they are overall affiliated with the Republic military, like 21st Century nations on Old Earth, they have their own police forces and system patrols commonly known as “Star Guards.” With the rise of the Empire all local forces were Imperialized.

The local government then decides it needs to “set a thief to catch a thief” and it obtains (and here the reader can choose one of two options)

1)the government buys a YT-1300 light freighter (or managers to capture a YT-1300, probably on the planetary surface) and modifies it to Star Guard requirements and specifications.

OR

2)the government orders a military version of the YT-1300 the GT-1350 from Corellian Engineering, modified to Guard requirements and specifications, including, of course, fast and powerful sublight and lightspeed engines.

The Star Guard interceptor at its landing field at night.

The Mission

The Star Guard interceptor has three missions

Smuggler chaser

Routine policing and system star guard duties including maintenance of navigation beacons and other vital sensor systems.

Search and Rescue

(just like 21st century coast guards on Old Earth)

The GT-1350 Smuggler Interceptor

A modified version of the popular YT1300fp version popular in the late Republic.

Normal complement is a crew of five to seven. That would include a pilot and co-pilot, who doubles as a shuttle pilot. The third regular crew member is a sensor and navigation specialist and when necessary, gunner. Depending on the mission the GT-1350 can carry Search and Rescue Technicians, Navigation aids engineers and technicians or Special Weapons and Tactics Teams who are trained in boarding and capturing intercepted space ships. The GT-1350 can also normally carry up to seven or eight passengers or if required up to fifteen passengers/intelligent beings on a rescue mission (although that would mean the vessel would be crowded until it could rendezvous with relief vessels.)

Special bays

The GT-1350 has replaced the cargo bays with

1)a shuttle bay for a one person/intelligent being shuttle craft

2)drone bays that can carry a number of sensor drones with different missions such as sensor probes and search and rescue probes. Or it can carry navigation and other in-system beacons, just like coast guards today act as buoy tenders and maintain other aids to navigation.

3)The third bay carries a high powered sensor dome that can be extended from the underbelly and used to focus on target areas of the mission

Until the Empire “Imperialized” the galactic police and military, Star Guards continued the tradition from Coast Guards on Old Earth where each nation often had their own colour scheme based on a mixture of mostly white and red ( usually not including some specialist vessels) US Coast Guard, largely white with some red except for icebreakers which are mostly red, Canadian Coast Guard with red hulls and white superstructure, Russian Coast Guard all red, China Coast Guard mostly white, UK Coast Guards white hulls and buff superstructure etc.

For painting this GT-1350, I used a slightly modified Canadian Coast Guard colour scheme, making most of the hull red with major parts white and equipment areas in buff or black.

For the livery I wanted something that would seem both futuristic and familiar. As with earlier projects I created the planet in the Solar Cell Photoshop plugin as a symbol for the star system where the ship is based. The stars and other symbols came from various dingbats to create a more alien look. I decided to use the English “Star Guard” since I found the terms System Guard, System Patrol and other variations awkward and I wanted something that suggest a galactic version of a coast guard. (But it’s also a tribute to Andre Norton’s Star Guard which, of course has nothing to do with the Star Wars universe and is a completely different story).

The underbelly of the Star Wars Command ship showing the colour schemes, livery and shuttle/sensor bays. The majority of the hull is painted red while the “superstructure” is painted white with some areas, including the landing gear in buff or black.

The disassembled model was primed. I then inserted the shuttle (forward bay) and the drones (upper bay in this picture) port side on the model. The shuttle and the drones are 1/2500 Star Trek 3D printed shuttles I bought from Shapeways for another project but decided they would be of better use for this project.

The underbelly of the GT-1350 before decals were added. You can see the sensor dome on the bottom left.

A view of the front. Note the star decal.

The port or left side after decals were added. One question I thought about was whether to weather? In the end I decided to weather the ship. As a military vessel under most circumstances, it would be better maintained than the Millennium Falcon’s often jury rigged repairs. On the other hand the George Lucas vision of the Star Wars universe calls for a certain dirty, aged, weathered look.

(This is the second of my scratch building and modelling projects based on the books I loved as a kid)

A ruined Roman signal station in the fog of the coast of Northumbria or Scotland. (Robin Rowland)

Rosemary Sutcliff was my premier favourite author as a kid–and I still reread her novels from time to time more than 40 years later.

Her first, and by far her most famous novel was The Eagle of the Ninth, first published in 1954. I must have first read it when I took out of the library six years later, when I was ten,around 1960. The Eagle of the Ninth is still one of my favourite novels, the story of the young Marcus Flavius Aquila and his freedman Esca searching the wilds of Caledonia (now Scotland) for the eagle of the lost Ninth Legion. It’s also still a favourite for fans around the world to this day (including those who had to take in school in Grade 9 in the 60s and 70s in both British Columbia and Ontario and probably elsewhere).

The Eagle of the Ninth also finally became a Hollywood movie, The Eagle, in 2011, decades after publication.

Back when I was ten or eleven (and also interested in model railroading) I attempted to build the abandoned Roman signal tower takes place, based on the C. Walter Hodges drawing in the original novel.

As you can see from other entries on this site, for the past year or so, in semi-retirement, I have been scratch building various models, mostly from science fiction. So a few months ago, I decided that while I might continue to model Star Wars and Star Trek, those wealthy franchises are getting somewhat stale. Almost everyone else is modelling Star Wars and Star Trek.

S0 it was time to branch out to more interesting work, involving novels I loved when I was growing up, most of which did not make it the big screen. In The Eagle movie, the chase through the moors and the confrontation at the signal tower was dropped for a more “Hollywood” style battle over the eagle of the Ninth Legion (not a satisfying substitution at all in my view). The 1977 BBC television series did use a “tower” set based on the C. Walter Hodges drawing.

Since I had already tried to make the signal tower decades ago as a kid, the obvious choice for an Eagle of the Ninth project was the signal tower.

So why did I update?

The abandoned Roman signal tower as envisioned by artist C. Walter Hodges in the original Eagle fo the Ninth.

My plan at first was a model based on the original drawing from the 1954 novel and used in many of the updates and republished versions.

It would have been a fairly simple project, a small courtyard, what Rosemary Sutcliff called a “guardroom” and the signal tower itself.

(The one perspective problem with the tower drawing is that the entrance gate is too small for people on horseback)

Before starting I did some basic research, checking Roman “signal tower” both in my personal library of Roman military history (which started when I began reading Rosemary Sutcliff) and online. It was soon quite clear that Roman signal tower in Hodge’s drawing bore no resemblance to the vast majority of Roman signal towers through the history of the empire.

A wide view of the Roman signal tower as seen in one brief shot in the 1977 BBC television series Eagle of the Ninth. Likely an “optical” as it was called in the days before CGI, either a matte painting or a model added to a stock shot of a moor.

The one thing that stood out from the current archaeological evidence is that what are still called “signal towers” were not just signal towers or watch towers–which is why the archaeologists prefer the term “signal stations.” Aerial surveillance and on the ground research has shown that in Scotland, northern England and later along the coast known as the Saxon Shore (which Sutcliff describes in The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers) the stations were relatively close together, some as close to one to two kilometres apart. So while the stations did have signalling capability, it was unlikely they were the hilltop beacon relays used in later centuries such as the Elizabethan and Napoleonic eras.

The stations followed the same basic concept design across the Roman Empire, but the installations varied in size depending on location and the military requirements ranging from a tower in a walled courtyard to mid-sized stations and what archaeologists today are calling a “fortlet” that is a small fort. (Fortlets could apparently be either large signal stations or smaller versions of the standard legionary or auxiliary fortress with just a couple of barracks blocks as well as other buildings). Fortlet signal stations were built along the Saxon Shore when the Roman Empire and Britain was threatened by sea-roving Saxon invaders. Those fortlets were a vital link joining the much larger Saxon Shore fortresses (which are described in The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers)

That means the towers themselves were not, as the reader might assume from Eagle of the Ninth, the base for a small lonely team of perhaps four legionaries responsible for the signal system. They varied in size. The stations were likely a base for what today we would call a platoon of perhaps fifteen to fifty men, again depending on the location and military requirements. The basic Roman squad was eight men, in the infantry commanded by decanus or in the case of cavalry troop of decurion. Some archaeological evidence shows that the towers had stables. Riders could have relayed messages if the weather prevented standard signalling. Stations with perhaps with fifty men could have been commanded by a junior centurion, likely under the eye of an experienced optio or just commanded by an optio, the equivalent of a staff sergeant or senior warrant officer. (Just as today second lieutenants command platoons and are watched by experienced senior non-commissioned officers.) Larger stations including those that could be called fortlets probably could have been the base for one or two centuries of about eighty to one hundred men each.

The fog just begins to clear around the long abandoned Roman signal station. (Robin Rowland)

Hostile territory

As I was reading the admittedly limited online academic literature, (there is more but the public has to pay extortionate prices to read it online from commercial scholarly publishers) the suggestions by the archaeologists on the role of the signal stations somehow began to sound familiar — and not just because I’ve been reading Rosemary Sutcliff and both fiction and nonfiction about the Roman army in the decades since.

I quickly realized that there was similar situation in the wilds of Caledonia as well as Roman garrisoned and for a period Roman occupied province of Valentia and that was what was happening two thousand years later in Afghanistan mainly in Kandahar, Helmand, Urozgan and other provinces from late 2001 until the staggered coalition withdrawal in the early 2010s.

Most of the archaeological papers were written prior to the 21st century war in Afghanistan, some as long ago as a century ago. Academics also usually don’t speculate without corroborating written or other evidence.

What prompted me to build the model in this way was that in my view the Afghanistan model is the best analogy for the Roman signal stations in ancient Britain.

I “covered” the war in Afghanistan from a desk in Toronto as photo editor for CBC News. That meant I was in almost daily contact with our staff and freelance journalists mainly at “Kaf” (Kandahar Air Field) or in Kabul. I knew when our crews were going “outside the wire”as embeds to the forward operating bases (FOB) and forward observations post (FOP or OP depending on which military was on that post). Some independent freelancers I worked with spent most of their time embedded “outside the wire.” Once, by coincidence, one day at a surplus store, looking to buy some outdoor clothes for a nature photography trip to New Mexico I ran into a freelancer colleague I knew who, on a limited budget, was gearing up for an embed in Afghanistan.

My conclusion is that Afghanistan is the best analogy for what Roman soldiers faced in Valentia and Caledonia. The nineteenth century colonial period and the American “old West” are not a good analogy due the EuroAmericans’ overwhelming superiority in the technology of the time. In Afghanistan, the coalition did have a superior military and a technological advantage but, like the Romans facing the northern tribes of ancient Britain, as we have learned over the past decade and more, it wasn’t enough. One archaeologist has suggested the analogy of the United Nations observation posts along the Green Line in Cyprus, but there the role is just observation and with one notable exception–the Turkish invasion–those observation posts were not in hostile territory.

So to continue with the analogy and compare ancient Britain with Afghanistan, the great legionary fortresses at Eburacum (York) and Deva (Chester) could be the equivalent of Kandahar Air Field or Bagram Air Field.

One of the best know is FOB Martello operated by the Canadian Forces in El Bak, 200 kilometres north of Kandahar. Company sized units and support troops from Canada and the Netherlands were based at Martello. Martello was named for the early nineteenth century defense and observation towers built by the British in England, Canada and elsewhere as a defence during the Napoleonic Wars. Another well known FOB was Ripley built the US Marines in Tarinkot, Urozgan Province and later called FOB Davis by the Australians.

The smaller signal stations the equivalent of observation posts that were the base for one or two platoons of infantry and supporting troops.

One of those US Marine Corps OPs at Kunjack in Helmand Province is described in the book Shooting Ghosts A US Marine, a combat photographer and their journey back from war by Thomas J. Brennan and Finbarr O’Reilly. Brennan says OP Kujack looked large from the bottom of a hill but was actually the size of a high school gym for himself and fifteen Marines. That could also describe one of the smaller Roman signal stations, while larger than a high school gym would have been the base for 15 to 2o men. A study of one site in Scotland speculates there would have been twelve infantry, four officers and eight cavalry or mounted infantry at the station.

A 2007 article in the Canadian Legion Magazine, Ghosts in the Hills, author Adam Day opens with these lines “In the mountains around Forward Operating Base Martello, the enemy are like ghosts; they hide among the villagers and emerge for battle only when and where they choose. Mostly they stay out of sight, firing their mortars and rockets from a distance. Sometimes though, they attack in force.” That could just as easily describe the tribes of Valentia and Caledonia coming out of the mist to attack one of the signal stations.

In both cases, there were smaller observation posts associated with the forward operating bases. At forward operating bases in Afghanistan, there were often observation posts “a couple of hundred metres” outside the main base. Archaeologists have found signal stations just 350 metres from a Roman fortlet.

The ruined tower/ signal station model in “daylight” on the coast. (Robin Rowland)

Artistic licence and planning the model

In planning the model, I wanted to stay as true as possible to the descriptions by Rosemary Sutcliff while working from a base of what we know today from archaeology and history about the signal stations.

So

the “tower” had to be a long abandoned ruin

the model should reflect how Marcus and Esca hid from the wild hunt and took refuge in the “tower.”

there had to be a high “tower” where Marcus threatened to throw the eagle into the waters below

given those considerations, that signal station should reflect, as much as possible, current historic and archaeological knowledge.

So what did the signal station tower actually look like? What we know comes from Trajan’s column which depict signal towers along the Danube River during the Emperor Trajan’s campaign against the Dacians.

So the basic tower as depicted is a stone building with a peaked roof and a balcony where some sort of fire/smoke signal system is used. That’s very different from the scene that C. Walter Hodges imagined in his drawing.

This book cover gives an artist’s concept of how a wooden tower might have looked.

The archaeological evidence indicates that the towers were first made of wood and thatch. If they became a permanent base, the tower would be made of stone with a tiled roof. Eventually the wooden palisade would be replaced by a stone wall with a bastion or tower at each corner and surrounded by a defensive ditch.

So with the research in mind, I created the signal station following those plans. However, I made two additions based on my reading. A stable for the horses and a well (at some sites archeologists have found indications of a well).

Top view of the model showing the signal station tower. the stable, stone walls, fallen wall platform and the outer ditch. (Robin Rowland)Front view of the diorama. (Robin Rowland)The left view of the diorama. (Robin Rowland)The right view of the diorama. (Robin Rowland)Cover of the 1977 Puffin edition of The Eagle of the Ninth, with cover art by David Smee.

I made two decisions that depart from Sutcliff’s text. Marcus and Esca’s return journey is generally in a southeasterly direction from the territory of the Dumnonii toward Borcovicus on Hadrian’s Wall (modern Pevensey) in the centre of the island. In the novel the tower is described as on a scarp overlooking a tarn. A tarn is a lake in a hollow that was carved out by the glaciers during the last ice age. The signal tower in David Smee’s cover for the 1977 Puffin edition depicts a much larger body of water, probably the North Sea. So I decided somewhat arbitrarily to place my model on a cliffside overlooking the ocean similar to the signal tower at Scarborough because it offered more interesting modelling opportunities. I also had a photograph that resembled the background of the Smee painting (as you can see from the images above) that I could Photoshop in as a background.

The second decision was that the wild hunt for the two happens in the autumn, with the furze, bracken and heather are brown and colourless. A summer scene would work better for the diorama.

The rear view of the diorama. (Robin Rowland)

The other artistic change is that the tower on the right of this image is taller than the other three–just so Marcus and Esca can get up there, pursued by Liathan and his two young friends.

Time and place

The Romans under Governor Julius Agricola invaded Scotland in 80 CE and conquered much of the lowlands, ending with the Battle of Mons Graupius in the Highlands in 84. Agricola left the following year and the Romans tried to consolidate their conquest by building a series of forts, fortlets and signal stations across the occupied territory. Just as the war in Iraq diverted American and coalition attention from Afghanistan, the Emperor Domitian withdrew troops from Caledonian territory for his war in Dacia. It was during this period that a series of close signal stations were built, many along the Gask Ridge, and called by some archaeologists “glen blockers.”

Over the next decades the Romans were bogged down in Caledonia, withdrawing from the more hostile areas. The Emperor Trajan also withdrew more troops for his campaigns elsewhere, leaving the same kind of military vacuum seen today in Afghanistan. The Caledonian revolt where the Ninth Legion may have disappeared occurred in 117 CE just as Hadrian was coming to the throne and there was unrest across the Empire. (What actually happened to the Ninth Legion is still disputed by scholars, the Wikipedia link summarizes that debate). Construction of Hadrian’s Wall began in 122 and was completed six years later. So while the date isn’t exactly clear, it appears that Marcus arrived in Britannia as a junior auxiliary cohort centurion around 130 CE.

Closer view of the courtyard of the signal station. (Robin Rowland)

On their adventure beyond the wall Marcus and Esca reach the fortress of Trimontium, (today Newstead, near Melrose, Scottish Borders) named for what today are known as the three Eildon Hills ( the name trium montium three hills or three mountains). Sutcliff says the double cohort fort had been abandoned for thirty years. That matches current knowledge and evidence. Trimontium first began as a signal station in the campaign in 80 BCE and was later expanded to a full fortress–built by the Ninth Legion. That plan then was a line of forts, fortlets and signal stations that would ensure Roman rule over the region and allow for quick reinforcement it any element in the chain was attacked. (Again the Afghanistan analogy is apt. ) Trimontiumn was abandoned about 20 years later between 100 and 105 BCE, which fits Sutcliff’s timeline.

So she wrote:

Now the wild had flowed in again, grass covered the cobbles of the streets, timber roofs had fallen in and the red sandstone walls stood gaunt and empty to the sky. The wells were choked with the debris of thirty autumns and an elder-tree had taken root in one corner of the roofless shrine where once had stood the cohort’s standard and the altars of its gods…..

If a signal station was abandoned at the same time, that description would be the basis for the model.

The Wild Hunt

“Swathes of mist, drawn up from the deep glen, were still drifting across it before the rising wind, but as a starting point, upward of a bowshot away, something that might be a broch loomed through the greyness.”

“They swung in their tracks toward the nearest tongue of birch woods…”

Model railway birch trees.

“a mass of furze seemed to offer a certain amount of cover and they dived into it liked hunted animals going to ground and began to work their way towards its heart.”

“A dark and evidently much-used tunnel in the furze opened up to them and they slid into it, Esca leading. The reek of fox grew stronger than ever.”

Here you see the station’s vallum ditch, the yellow furze and the purple heather (as well as the foxes). The long abandoned Roman road leading to the station is covered in grass and undergrowth and has collapsed where it has been undermined by the ditch which is now a dirty stream.

“The building they had glimpsed through the mist was quite clear now; not a broch at all but an old Roman signal tower.”

“”The narrow archway, doorless now, gaped blankly in the wall…they stumbled through into a small courtyard…”

” Another empty door faced them…”

“a small courtyard where grass had long since covered the cobbles”

The balcony on four sides of the signal station tower that would have been used for the smoke or fire signals, has mostly long since collapsed.

Here is where I changed the scenario….assuming that much of the signal station tower’s ceilings/floors have collapsed….and to let Marcus and Esca get up the bastion tower so the model does pay tribute to the novel.

which means they head through the undergrowth past what’s left of the stables to that tower.

“Marcus was almost blinded by the thrashing to great black wings past his face and a startled raven burst upward uttering its harsh, grating alarm cry, and flew off northward with slow, indignant wing beats, caaking as it went.”

I decided not to have any human figures in the model, imagining what the signal station would be like on any day in 130 CE when humans weren’t present.

The “well choked with the debris of thirty autumns” in the courtyard of the signal station. The wood, logs and tiles are from the station building and the collapse of the wall platform.

What’s left of the stables.

Gulls (and other seabirds) on the old peaked roof. The gulls and seabirds are a mixture of N Scale gulls from Langley Models and Prieser HO gulls and other birds (when the tiny figures were put side by side there wasn’t much difference.)

A Preiser bird on one of the towers.

A Preiser bird on one of the towers.

A couple of Langley seagulls on the wall of the signal station.

Gulls and other seabirds on the ocean side. (In this photo, the supports for the birds have been removed in Photoshop to make them appear to be flying)

Almost all the model starships on the market today come from either Star Wars or Star Trek, with a few from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Some speciality hobby stores both brick and mortar and online do offer some “vintage” kits. Even on Shapeways, the online marketplace for 3-D printed models, the offerings are almost all Star Trek or Star Wars.

Yes as you can see from this site, I do model Star Wars and I have some Star Trek models on my to-do list. A few months ago I decided it was time that my favourite science fiction author as a kid, Andre Norton, received some modelling tributes.

I decided that my first Andre Norton project should be from the first Norton science fiction novel I read when I was 13, The Time Traders. (which became a series of novels )

The Time Traders, first in the series, was written in the fifties at the height of the cold war. The basic premise is that the Soviet Union finds an alien starship preserved in the Arctic ice cap and starts using that technology (at the time of the so-called, later proved to be non-existent “missile gap”) and the United States must counter the Soviets.

Both sides some how, it’s never explained, develop time travel and in a time travel arms race send agents back in time to various ages when the aliens later dubbed the “Baldies” were active on Earth. The “Baldies are alien pale, white, hairless, alien humanoids.

Norton only described the starship as spherical. And various cover artists had their own interpretations of the ship trapped in ice. Every cover is different, unlike movies or television where the design is fixed, so that gave me a little flexibility.

Time Traders paperback cover.Time Traders hardcover cover.

So I decided to start with an N scale propane tank model from my model railway days ( I may try other approaches to baldie ships in the future)

I then added a bridge similar to the first cover, using a manufacturers container for contact lens (which didn’t work out as well as I had hoped) and stand/main engine from a bottle top.

Once the model was complete, I took it out into the snow of my front yard.

Perhaps this is how a 1950s helicopter might have spotted the Baldie ship in the thinning Arctic Ice.And this is what the helicopter crew might have seen as they go down for a closer look. (Robin Rowland)

Of course I couldn’t leave the model out in the snow. So I created a base using another cover, from the novel Galactic Derelict.

Landing on an alien base.Another view of the starship

There are a couple of differences here. In Galactic Derelict the spherical ship is a scout, capable of holding perhaps up to five humans/humanoids.

It is discovered in the American west during the Palaeolithic when there is still volcanism in the Rockies (at least in the novel) and during an attempt to bring it forward to twentieth century time, instead it sends the crew on a journey across the galaxy and back. In the several thousand years the “Baldie” civilization has collapsed and one of the bases the Terrans visit is a refueling station that, luckily still operates.

So in this case the model remains the full size starship. not the scout. The landing zone is a container for frozen meat pies. The “tower” really should be further away. Once again I used two toothbrush containers glued together, then add details from scrap.

To match the cover, I photographed the base in available light late on the afternoon of April 1. Also there are images of the model in full light to show more details.

The Baldie ship at the refueling base (Robin Rowland)The “tower” at the alien base. (Robin Rowland)A closer shot of the “Baldie” ship after landing at the base (Robin Rowland)The base in full light. (Robin Rowland)The tower in full light (Robin Rowland)

Original router packaging and the resulting model photoshopped into a jungle setting. (Robin Rowland)

Just before Christmas, I purchased a new router. Opened the box and the router was packaged in papier-mâché, a more environmentally friendly to all that plastic. I took one look at it and it reminded me of all those photos of jungle ruins.

Finely carved corridors from the ruins of the Buddhist temple of Angkor Ta Prohm in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It dates to the 12th and 13th century and was built by king Jayavarman VII who is considered to be one of the greatest rulers of the ancient Khmer Empire. Allie Caulfield/ Wikimedia Commons

So I imagined that once on an alien world (of course it could just as well be Earth) that once there was an impressive building, the Emerald Temple, that was for some reason lost to history abandoned and thus the jungle took over. But this temple was so well built that most of it has survived the ages.

So I put my several ongoing kitbashing ship model projects aside to create the temple. It took about five hours work over three days.

Close up view of the packaging. It certainly looks as if it’s a web of vines . (Robin Rowland)

I am calling this the Emerald Temple. There was once cladding or covering or paint that when the temple was new and active would have been a bright emerald green. That has now decayed so I began with a very light spray of emerald green spray paint plus a little camouflage olive green spray paint.

The Emerald Temple begins to take shape. (Robin Rowland)A closer view of the emerald paint on one of the towers (Robin Rowland)Top view of the unpainted packing (Robin Rowland)

I began with the top of the temple, adding a mix of commercial autumn leaves ground cover with dried tea from old tea bags to create the old leaves and other forest detritus that has built up over the years.

Ground cover and tea leaves create the detritus that has built over the years and decades. (Robin Rowland)Front view with the old leaves and other forest detritus. (Robin Rowland)

I then added several layers of different coloured ground cover and foam bushes.

Ground cover added to all sections of the Emerald Temple (Robin Rowland)A closer view of one of the towers. (Robin Rowland)

Additional plant life were twigs from my garden and a tomato stem, dipped in dilute white glue and then with some ground cover added.

An even closer view of the tower. (Robin Rowland)

And here is the final product

The Emerald Temple model. (Robin Rowland)A slightly different angle. All the final product photos were shot in direct sunlight through a window. (Robin Rowland)Close shot of the tower with modelling complete. (Robin Rowland)

Finally I photoshopped the completed model into an old screen grab of the jungle in Thailand from a documentary I shot back in 1997, worked so that the temple appears to be part of the older, lower resolution video. It’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not the temple is part of a lost civilization on Earth or on an alien world.

This vintage film image was created in Analog Efex Pro using an old film setting. Sony Alpha 55, ,Sony 55 to 200 SAM lens, ISO 3200, aperture priority, popup flash fired, 160 at f16.

A little later style of black and white film. (Robin Rowland)

And if the director was still using black and white. SilverEfex Pro, Alpha 77, Tamron 70 t0 300 in macro mode, manual settings, ISO 1600, 32 seconds at f8.

Another old film look at the Emperor and his guards. (Robin Rowland)

Finally, how I created the set:

The set for the Emperor Palpatine shoot (Robin Rowland)

So here’s the “set” for the Emperor Palpatine shoot. The round base originally supported WalMart’s delicious chocolate fudge cake. I had kept the base several months ago as I was hoarding possible scratch building material. The base is set on a piece of black poster board. The background is a cardboard box spray painted black. The two wall panels are also from chocolate cake bought from my local supermarket.

Lighting: Three lights on most of the images. An LED flashlight as you see to the right of the setup. On top of the box was a small LED light (designed for use with mobile phones, pointed at the offwhite ceiling. The third LED was to the left and about two metres away pointing just to the left edge of the box.

Once I had finished the tripod time exposure shoot, I wanted to get this shot of the set so I used the Alpha 55 with just the popup flash at -2 without changing the lighting set up otherwise. I used the same settings when shooting wider shots above with the Alpha 55.